During commercial meat production, a beef carcass is subjected to a number of different processing steps prior to and during the preparation of meat cuts and other meat products from the carcass. The objective of several of these steps, referred to herein as “interventions,” is microbial reduction. For example, shortly after an animal is slaughtered, it is subjected to a hide-on carcass wash to reduce potential microbial contamination on the carcass hide. The hide is then removed, often followed by another washing step. Portions of the carcass may also be steam pasteurized prior to being chilled. During many of these interventions, it is desirable to operate within predetermined processing parameters to maximize the effectiveness of the intervention.
The carcasses are also tested and/or inspected at a number of locations along the meat processing line, and certain information regarding carcasses may be recorded at the testing/inspection locations. An example of this is a test to determine whether the carcass surface exhibits indicators of fecal contamination. In addition, portions of the carcass that have been removed, such as the viscera, may be inspected to ensure that the animal was healthy at the time of slaughter. Additional inspections may occur on meat cuts and other meat products derived from the carcasses.
Unfortunately, measurements on processed carcasses, carcass portions and/or meat products will, from time to time, not pass one or more inspections that occur inside or outside the processing facility. Occasionally, measurement that do not pass an inspection(s) are caused by a carcass characteristic or condition that was caused, or intended to be addressed, by a particular intervention.
To determine the source or cause and/or to remedy such undesired measurements, it is often helpful to consider whether an intervention performed on that carcass was operating outside of a predetermined parameter(s). With respect to the hide-on carcass wash, for example, it may be helpful to determine whether the wash system was operating outside of a temperature parameter at the time the carcass having the undesired measurements was washed. Conventional processing operations manually record data relating to interventions performance as a function of date and time. However, because this approach does not allow data to be continuously collected for each carcass, such recorded data is of limited usefulness for tracking the source of such undesired measurements. Additionally, this approach does not identify the specific time frame during which an intervention was not operating within desired parameters.